Even the French have admitted that smoking is not sexy anymore, with the country introducing sweeping new laws to ban the act in most outdoor areas.
The injunction, which online commentators have jokingly suggested is tantamount to a ban on being French, comes into effect on July 1 and prohibits lighting up on beaches, at parks, in public gardens, outside schools, at bus stops and sports venues.
The ban, designed to protect children, will be enforced by regular police and contravening it will land rule-breakers with a fine of $153.
“Tobacco must disappear where there are children,” the country’s health and family minister Catherine Vautrin said. “The freedom to smoke must end where the freedom of children to breathe fresh air begins.”
However, cool locals and beret-wearing tourists lining the terrasses from Paris to Marseille will not fall foul of the rules for lighting up a Gitane or Gauloise, because seating areas outside bars and pubs are exempt. Despite being less cool, electronic cigarettes also avoid the banned list.
A cigarette delicately perched on the lips is an image synonymous with France, but smoking is actually at a low ebb in the country.
In fact, the French Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction says the number of smokers is at its lowest percentage ever recorded in the country: 23.1 percent. That represents a fall of over five points since 2014.
Some 75,000 people in France die annually from smoking, the National Committee Against Smoking reports.
In many European countries smoking is banned in indoor public places, workplaces, and on public transport.
In 2008, France’s Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin implemented a ban in bars, restaurants, and nightclubs.
Public opinion polls showed that a majority of citizens supported the ban, despite the stereotype of the French loving a puff.
But of course, there has been some pushback to the recent legislation. David Lisnard, the mayor of the Mediterranean resort town of Cannes, said it constitutes a breach of individual rights.
“Is this restriction of freedom on all these sites based on public health grounds?” he asked on X, sharing a tweet by health chief Vautrin.
Writing in French, the conservative politician added: “Don’t you think that we need to put an end to these good conscience hygiene policies, which hide public impotence in all other areas and the State’s inability to reform itself, refocus on its essential missions, and seek performance in the service of society?”
That image of smoking as chic, rebellious, and intellectual was shaped by literary giants like Jean-Paul Sartre and huge movie stars like Brigitte Bardot and Alain Delon.
Hollywood was happy to perpetrate this image, leaning into the trope of the cool, aloof French smoker to signify European sophistication.
In 2021, the French League Against Cancer found that despite smoking being phased out since around 2006 in the country, it still got ample screen time in French cinema—2.6 minutes on average per film, the equivalent of six television adverts.
“Tobacco remains quasi-ubiquitous in French films,” a spokesperson for the organization said at the time.
Mathieu Kassovitz, the director of gritty crime noir La Haine responded by telling the BBC that “movies are not there to be role models.”
“They are there to show what society is,” he said. “We have cigarettes in real life so they should be in movies too.”
The French relationship with tobacco runs much deeper than literature and the silver screen, though. The crop arrived in the country in the 16th century and was popularized by Jean Nicot. Yes, Nicot as in nicotine.
